The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

In 1866, Walter Moody arrives in New Zealand, hoping to find his fortune in the gold rush gripping the country.  Taking lodging at a hotel in Hokitika, he enters the bar only to have all conversations around him stop.  He has stumbled onto a meeting of twelve local men, who are discussing the strange events that have been happening recently.  A hermit has been found dead in his house, a prostitute has apparently tried to kill herself, a great fortune has been discovered and a prospector has gone missing.  As Walter listens to the stories, he finds himself drawn into the mystery.  What really happened, and how are the lives and fortunes of all the men intertwined?

I finished The Luminaries late last night and my honest first reaction was to be in complete awe of Catton's skill.  I don't think I've ever read a book as intricately plotted, with so many relationships between different characters.  There are at least sixteen main characters and much of the plot and mystery depends on how they relate to each other, and the things they tell each other, that the other characters aren't necessarily aware of. Not only does Catton manage to keep all of this straight in the mind of the reader, but she also manages to slowly reveal clues and subtly alter our perception of these relationships, to move the mystery on throughout the novel.  I can't even begin to imagine how you would go about planning a book as complex as this one, but I am suitably impressed.

I was also very impressed with the writing.  The Luminaries is a long book and it's not got the fastest of paces.  The writing is Victorian in style, and I found reading it to be a similar experience to reading a good Dickens novel, or like picking up Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.  The writing lets you really sink into the book and the world of nineteenth century New Zealand.  Which is a great place to be; I loved the frontier-like town of Hokitika with all of it's prostitutes, prospectors, illegitimate sons, plotting and gunfights.

So on an intellectual level, I was blown away by The Luminaries and can see why it was awarded the Booker Prize last year.  But books are about more than the skill involved in creating them, and thankfully The Luminaries had a good plot as well, with a story that kept me engaged.  Although I guessed some of the elements of the mystery, I enjoyed watching the whole thing unravel and just sped through the last two hundred pages, in order to find out what really happened.

If The Luminaries has a flaw, it is in characterisation.  I loved the more sinister characters in the novel, Lydia and Frank Carver, as well as the ambiguous character of Anna Wetherell, but some of the thirteen men felt a little flat.  I could relate to the Chinese characters because of the way their lives were written about in the book, but with some of the other men, Catton didn't give me any reason to feel attached to them or root for them, meaning that I sometimes felt a bit detached when reading the novel.  This stops me from giving The Luminaries 5 out of 5, but it's still one of the best, most impressive novels I've read in a long time.  I'll be extremely surprised if this one doesn't make the short-list for the Baileys Prize.

Source: Library
First Published: 2013
Baileys Longlist: Book 3/20
Score: 4.5 out of 5

The Beach by Alex Garland

I very rarely copy the summary from the back of a book, but this one is simply perfect and I can think of no way to better it:

Summary:

The Khao San Road, Bangkok - first stop on the backpacker trail.  On Richard's first night there a fellow traveller slits his wrists, leaving Richard a map to 'The Beach'.  The Beach is a legend among young travellers in Asia; white sands circling a lagoon hidden from the sea, coral gardens and freshwater falls surrounded by jungle.  In this earthly paradise, it is rumoured, a select community lives in blissful ignorance.  For Richard, haunted by the glamour of Vietnam war movies, a trek into unknown Thai territory is irresistible. He was looking for an adventure.  Now he's found it.

Thoughts:

Reading older books from my shelves has completely influenced my reading habits; now I'm starting to pick up books that weren't even on my planned TBR list, and long may it continue!  I remember the film of The Beach coming out back in 2000, but was too young to see it, and have had vague plans of reading the book ever since.  And I'm glad that I finally picked it up.  The Beach is a genuinely thrilling, page-turner of a book that kept me up past my bedtime several nights in a row.

The great thing about The Beach is that it is a slow burn kind of book.  Things start off very dramatically with the suicide of a traveller in Bangkok but then slow down again as Richard attempts to find and then live on The Beach.  The whole time, there is a sense that something isn't quite right, a sense of foreboding, and this gradually builds and builds until you're simply desperate to find out what happens at the end.  I was worried the ending would be disappointing given all of the build up, but it was actually more gripping than I thought it would be.  I've since watched the film too, and the film ending is just awful compared to the book, such a cop out.

The Beach is really about what happens when a group of people isolate themselves completely from the outside world.  Moral codes start to slip and patterns of dominance start to emerge.  As Richard lives on The Beach, his sense of belonging and identity with the world as a whole slowly starts to fade and his whole personality becomes based on his new group identity.  And if things are accepted by the group, who are you to challenge them?  I thought Garland portrayed this change in Richard very subtly and effectively, up to the point where he couldn't recognise himself any more.

The only minor issue I had with The Beach was that it was pretty pretentious at times.  There was all this stuff about travelling only being important if it is 'off the beaten track' and away from other tourists, always looking for the next unspoiled destination.  Richard and his friends look down their noses at everyone constantly.  I know that Garland is only portraying people who do feel like this, but it did get irritating at times.

Still, I would recommend The Beach if you're after a page-turner or thriller, or curious about what happens to humanity when it's left completely to it's own devices.  I couldn't put it down.

Source: Personal copy

Published: 1996

Score: 4 out of 5

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

One night, twenty-four year old Ashley Cordova, the daughter of cult film director Stanislas Cordova, is found dead in an apparent suicide.  Disgraced journalist Scott McGrath begins to investigate her death in an attempt to solve the mystery surrounding Cordova and his later works, which can only be bought on the black market.  The films are legendary, shown in underground screenings all over the world, and have even been reported to make viewers insane.  But as McGrath begins to follow Ashley's trail, he comes across a web of sinister rumours and connections that prove difficult to get to the bottom of. Just what is real and what is made up for the films?

Night Film is going to be a very difficult book to review, because it's one of those books where the less you know about it, the better.  It's full of twists and turns as the line between reality and myth is blurred throughout the book, and you never quite know what the truth is.  I'd love to say more about the plot, but I can't without ruining the reading experience.  You'll have to take it from me - Night Film is a clever page turner and will certainly keep you guessing.

One thing I loved about the book was the inclusion of different types of media.  Alongside the written story, Pessl has included screenshots of websites, personal records, police files, magazine clippings and transcriptions of messages.  There's even an app you can download as you read, which I chose not to use, but which has more elements of the same sort.  I really enjoyed these parts of the book as it gave you the feeling of solving the mystery along with McGrath and allowed you to make up your own mind as you went.

Night Film is a chunky book but I raced through it in under three days as I simply could not put it down.  It's certainly an active reading experience, as the book and the characters got into my head and have stayed there ever since.  I found parts of it genuinely creepy and haunting as Pessl plays with horror and how reality can be manipulated to create certain experiences.  I don't think I'm doing a good job of articulating just why I loved this book so much, but it's so different from everything else I read and it's just one of those books that worm their way into your very being and stay there.  It's not a book I'm likely to forget any time soon.

So the take-home message from this review is: read Night Film, and read it as soon as possible.  You wont be disappointed!

Source: Personal copy
First Published: 2013
Score: 5 out of 5

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

Journalist Mikael Blomqvist is licking his wounds after being found guilty in a libel cause bought by business owner Wennerstrom when he is approached by Henrik Vanger, head of the Vanger Corporation.  Vanger's niece Harriet disappeared in the sixties and was never found, leaving Henrik to suspect she has been murdered.  In need of a new job, Blomqvist agrees to investigate the case and the complex Vanger family, who hide many secrets.  Along the way he is helped by Lisbeth Salander, a private investigator and hacker with a troubled past.

I'm not a big reader of crime or thriller books, but my husband bought me the Millennium trilogy when they became massive a few years ago and finally I decided to pick the first one up off the shelf and give it a try.  I wasn't expecting to like it, but I really did and I'm now looking forward to the second in the trilogy.

The original Swedish title of the novel was Men who Hate Women, and this is by far a more accurate description of the book.  It's really a furiously angry assault on society and in particular, the amount of rape and sexual assault that occurs in Sweden, but also across the world.  Each part of the novel starts with a statistic that makes for grim reading.  I am fortunate enough to have never experienced sexual assault myself but it's scarily common; statistics vary but between one in five and one in three women in the UK will experience sexual violence in their life.  It's something I feel strongly about and it's a crime that I think isn't taken nearly seriously enough.  To see a book like this, that became as popular as it did, tackle an issue like that can only be a good thing;

"'Because it's so easy' he said.  'Women disappear all the time.  Nobody misses them.  Immigrants.  Whores from Russia.  Thousands of people pass through Sweden every year."

Whilst the writing in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isn't the best I've experienced, the story is well plotted with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing.  The pacing at the beginning was quite slow, whilst Larsson got across the necessary background information, but the pace soon picked up and I couldn't put the book down by the end.  Once Mikael and Lisbeth met, the book became a whole lot better.  There is a graphic rape scene in the book but it's not gratuitous as it fits the themes of the novel.

Most readers who have read this book loved Lisbeth and I was expecting to as well, but in the end I just liked her.  I felt like Larsson was trying too hard to tell the reader how alternative she was, how outside of the mainstream of society.  I liked her and thought she was a great main character, but I didn't love her.

I would recommend A Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, as the plot is good enough to overcome any issues with the writing.  I'm looking forward to getting to the remaining two books in the trilogy.

Source: Personal copy

First Published: 2005 (Sweden)

My Edition: Quercus, 2008

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot

Father Thomas Kelly, a Jesuit priest, is happily based at a university when he is called to Rome by his former mentor.  A mysterious yet important document, the Concordant, has gone missing from the Vatican Library and must be recovered at all costs.  Kelly sets to work alongside an art historian, Livia, who claims to be representing a group who are just as interested in recovering the Concordant as the Vatican are.  But Livia has her own secrets, and the contents of the document are powerful enough to shake Kelly's faith to it's foundations.

Blood of the Lamb is marketed as The Historian meets The Da Vinci Code, so I was keen to get my hands on it as soon as possible!  There are certainly massive similarities with The Da Vinci Code; in both a male lead uncovers a deeply buried religious secret with the help of a female sidekick, but happily I found Cabot's writing much better than Brown's.  Despite there being a supernatural element to the story (the comparison to The Historian is a big clue), the mythology of the supernatural community felt authentic enough for the book to somehow pull off being realistic.

In addition to this, Cabot weaves in enough twists and turns to keep the reader on their toes.  I don't read many thrillers but I love intelligent, well written ones like this.  In fact, until about 97% of the way through the book, I was convinced that I had found a new favourite.  I loved everything about it, from the plot to the characters and the writing.  But then something happens in the end that stretches the credulity of the reader to breaking point and consequently, the whole story feels false.  The ending just went too far and unfortunately it ruined the book for me.  Honestly, it felt a bit silly.

The ending makes Blood of the Lamb hard to review and rate.  I do think the book had many, many positive features but they were ultimately over-shadowed by a bad ending.

Source: From the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: 6th August 2013

Score: 3 out of 5

The Cutting Season by Attica Locke

Caren is the manager at Belle Vie, a sprawling plantation house deep in Louisiana   One morning whilst making her inspection of the grounds, she comes across a young Mexican woman, brutally murdered and discarded.  With the police investigation inadequate, Caren investigates and the more she finds out, the more she starts to suspect a cover up.  The white owner of the property is desperate to sell, the woman's employer has a history of violence and  she might have uncovered something she shouldn't have just before her death.  The investigation even leads back to Caren's ancestor Joseph, a slave on the plantation that disappeared soon after gaining freedom.  An ambitious book, The Cutting Season covers race relations, history and politics as well as a criminal investigation.

Crime is not a genre I read very often but I had heard good things about Attica Locke.  In fact, I own her previous novel, Black Water Rising, although typically I haven't got around to reading it yet.  I'd seen some positive reviews of Cutting Season on other blogs and the setting of the book really appealed.  On our American honeymoon last summer, my husband and I spent a few weeks in Louisiana and we visited lots of those old plantation homes and there is something about the history and atmosphere of such places that I thought would make for a great crime story.  And that atmosphere was conveyed excellently in the book by Locke, it had an almost gothic, sinister feel which helped build suspense throughout.

On the whole, I enjoyed Cutting Season.  It's expertly written and ambitious in coverage.  The topics of race and slavery are handled sensitively and the book is thought provoking - who should really own the plantation houses?  Should they be preserved for history or should we wipe the slate clean and start again?  Does history belong to all of us or just a select few?  Should history affect modern day decisions?  Although I'm not a big fan of crime fiction, I could see that the mystery of who had killed Ines was well structured with enough red herrings to keep me guessing.  I didn't work out who it was before the big reveal.

Despite everything I enjoyed about the book, it just seemed to be missing that special something.  I don't know if it was purely because I don't love crime, but the middle section lagged and I never felt fully engaged with the story.  In some ways, I think Locke was too ambitious and couldn't do everything she wanted to do within the confines of a crime/mystery novel; the genre was too restrictive for all the themes she wanted to cover.  Locke was experimental by adding so much more to the genre but too confined by the conventions of the genre.  I would have liked to see more of a gothic literary style novel rather than a traditional whodunit.  

I'm sure crime fans will love this book as it's a good mystery and the writing is excellent.  I wasn't the biggest fan of this one but I don't think I was the right reader for it.

Source: Library (reserved)
First Published: 2012
My Edition: Serpent's Tail UK, 2012
Score: 3.5 out of 5

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Christine wakes up every morning with no memory of who she is or why she has aged two decades overnight.  Her husband Ben must  explain that she lost her memory in a car crash and each day Christine must come to terms with her condition all over again.  But then she starts to be treated by Dr Nash, who encourages her to keep a journal. On the inside cover she has written 'Don't trust Ben!' As her memories start to return, Christine must learn that not everything around her is quite what it seems.

Thoughts:
Before I Go To Sleep is the very definition of a page-turner.  I started it on Saturday morning and by lunch time on Sunday I had finished it.  Watson cleverly gives you just enough clues in each chapter to keep you guessing and reading on to see if your guess was correct.  He also makes things deliberately ambiguous so it's not too easy to guess where the plot is going (although I certainly had a vague idea of what might happen at the end).  I've not read too many thrillers but have the feeling that the structure and pacing was perfect in this one.

Christine's condition was dealt with very well too.  In the hands of another writer the repetition of each day, of Christine waking up and not remembering anything, could have become very tedious.  But Watson manages to keep the writing fresh and you end up feeling very sorry for Christine and rooting for her as she makes more discoveries.

Despite all these strong points, I found Before I Go To Sleep to be only an average read.  The majority of the book is written in diary entries and I just couldn't suspend my belief enough to accept that Christine would write dialogue, pages and pages of it, word for word in her journal.  Watson told me it was a journal, but it read like a normal story so I never really bought into the concept.  The end of the book annoyed me too, after all the horror and violence of the preceding events everything just fits together conveniently and nicely like nothing bad had ever happened.  Life just isn't like that.  And without going into spoilers, there were quite a few plot holes, especially surrounding Christine's release from a mental health institution.

Verdict: Before I Go To Sleep is a fun, addictive read. Just don't think too much when you read it!
Source: Library (reserved)
First Published: 2011
Score: 3 out of 5

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

I went into this book not entirely sure what to expect.  I knew it was a gothic tale inspired by books such as Jane Eyre, The Woman in White and Wuthering Heights, and I knew that it was partly about loving books, but I didn't know it was going to be a mystery.  Margaret Lea, the reclusive daughter of a bookshop owner, is summoned to write the biography of the nation's favourite writer, Vida Winter.  But Vida's compulsive storytelling makes it hard to separate fact from fiction and Margaret is soon drawn into a world of stormy weather, moors, desperate love, violence and feral children.  Just what is the truth behind the stories?

There was much I enjoyed about The Thirteenth Tale.  I just adored the beginning section describing Margaret's life in the bookshop and her passion for reading (many quotes were copied out of the book) and found Vida Winter to be a fascinating character.  The writing just glides across the page and I found myself trying to read faster and faster in order to find out what would happen next.  I don't read many mysteries and didn't solve the mystery before the reveal, but I loved looking back and thinking about all of the clever clues I had missed, as well as solving what Setterfield had left deliberately obscure.

Being a bibliophile, I also appreciated the references to some of my favourite books, although they could have been a bit more subtle.  I haven't read The Turn of the Screw, but I did catch the homages to Wuthering Heights (wild love), Jane Eyre (madness, governesses) and The Woman in White.  I tend to enjoy books that attempt to write in the style of these classics (The Historian) and this was no exception.  Of course the writing didn't live up to the standard of the original novels, but I thought it a fitting tribute.

There were parts of this novel I didn't like as much.  The constant reference to twins as the central motif grated on me as the book went on.  There's only so many times I wanted to read about Margaret looking at her 'other self' in a mirror or windowpane, especially as it was described in the same way each time.  I felt the middle sections lagged in comparison with the rapid pace of the end of the book, and I wanted more about Margaret's Mum, who could have been a fascinating character if she appeared in the book for a longer period of time.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys the gothic classics, or a good mystery, or who likes reading books about books.  I'm going to end this review with my favourite quote from the book;

   " In the background is the hiss of the gas heater; we hear the sound without hearing it for, side by side, together and miles apart, we are deep in our books."

Source: Library 

First Published: 2006

Score: 4 out of 5

Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy

India, 1974.  Miss Timmins' School for Girls is a throwback from the British colonial days; now Indian parents send their children there for a British style boarding education.  Charulata Apte is a new teacher at the school and must find her own path away from the safety of her family home.  Just as she starts finding her feet, a teacher she has befriended is murdered and suspicion falls on various members of the community.

This book was much broader in scope than I had anticipated.  I expected a who-dunnit set in India but it was so much more - it was truly a coming of age novel, as Charu deals with sexuality, the role of women, becoming an effective teacher, relationships and subtle prejudices.

The novel is split into three broad sections.  The first is narrated by Charu as she settles into the school, the second by a pupil, Nandita, in the immediate aftermath of the murder, and the final by Charu again as the truth comes out.  In my opinion the first section was the best.   As a teacher myself, I enjoyed the way Currimbhoy wrote honestly about the challenges of teaching and I liked the boarding school setting (it took me back to my Enid Blyton days!).  I also though Currimbhoy wrote the relationships between Charu, the other teachers, her family and the pupils realistically, with emotional depth.

However as the book went on, the writing became a bit meandering and it seemed to lose focus.  The same scenes were dwelled on by different characters, which became a bit repetitive. There was a clever twist at the end (I didn't manage to guess the murderer), but the book could have been edited down to make the final sections pacier and more engaging.  The secondary 'mystery' of Charu's parents' background was almost more interesting to me than the primary mystery of who killed the teacher.

Verdict: Good debut novel by a talented writer.
Source: ARC via NetGalley
Publisher: Harper Collins
Available: 21st June 2011
Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I'll admit it: Dan Brown is my brain candy.  Especially lately, whenever I feel in need of something easy and page-turner-y to read, I turn to Dan Brown.  I don't think it's high quality literature, but it's formulaic and therefore comforting to me!

Synopsis: Robert Langdon (he of Angels and Demons & The Da Vinci Code) is asked to Washington to deliver a lecture by his long-term mentor.  However, when he arrives he makes a gruesome discovery and ends up investigating the secrets of the Masons.

Score: 3 out of 5

I found this book a bit disappointing.  It was easy to read, and I was always expecting it to be formulaic and silly, but some of the later sections really seemed to be pushing the boundaries of credibility.  Without giving too much away - am I really supposed to believe that such a thing as breathable liquid exists?

Part of the problem is that the Masons are just not as glamourous as the Holy Grail or the Illuminati trying to wipe out the Vatican.  Their 'secrets' were not as exciting and there didn't seem to be as much action to keep the pace going smoothly.  There were large sections where not much happened.  The final revelations seemed to me to be an anti-climax after all of the build up through the book.

I also noticed that there was a lack of well developed secondary characters.  The bad guy, although a good bad guy, was a simplistic, pure evil type character and there was no one with any moral ambiguities to balance it out, as in the previous books.  There was also of course the appearance of a perfect female sidekick.

Looking back on this review so far, I have been quite harsh.  Despite all of the above, I still enjoyed the whole reading experience and the book definitely held my attention well.  I just think it wasn't as good as previous offerings from the author.